Teaser Trailers

What is a guy to do at three in the morning when he has nothing better to do than sleep, but can't even do that? Kill time on the internet, I suppose. Which is what I happen to do quite a bit of. On this particular night I'm just browsing through Vimeo, typed “teaser trailer” into the search field and just scanning through the results and clicking on anything mildly interesting. Figured I'd jot down whatever thoughts come to mind as the eye catches these quick glances at what I presume are much larger productions which are in near finished states. Though already made my way through a dozen or so before I started, bit of a shame I didn't start doing this sooner.

“Brainwashed Love”
http://vimeo.com/8896502
Happen to be the first one I ran into, and I was quite impressed at first. Some decent typography work, a nice little catchy/poppy beat with some chip-tune-y stuff thrown in, I was getting pumped before I even saw any footage. And woah, this thing looks like it has a budget, nice lighting and color grading, and a really crisp picture. Looks pretty professional.
Oh, love story. Oh, guy and gal sitting at coffee house table eating ice cream. Oh, sassy girl talking frankly about fucking. Oh, projector room and stoned out dudes and bikes and emotion. Chick spinning around  in flapper attire. It's an 'indie' flick. Not my cup of tea I guess. Maybe I'm being a dick, but it starts checking off the cliches from the list in my head too quickly for me to keep up.

“12”
http://vimeo.com/8895957
Uh, it's Russian. You can tell it's Russian 'cause the dude actually uploaded it as a mkv file. Heh, who does that? Not us spoiled Americans with our Macs and our Quicktimes. Old people around a table. A knife, and ooh, explosions. Too bad I don't understand anything they're saying. And it ends on a serious note, I guess it's a serious movie.

“Death of the Dead”
http://vimeo.com/8875907
Not so serious is this zombie flick. Zombies seem to be a theme among teaser trailers I run into at three in the morning, but hey, this one was actually good. Don't think I've seen ninja zombies before, and while it starts off as another cliche low budget thing, it actually grows on me. I guess it pushes all the right campy violence filled comedy buttons. Production wise it's very nice, I don't expect low budget zombie movies to look and sound this good. Acting doesn't look bad either, the other thing that usually doesn't hold up in these sorts of things, at least as far as the leading lady goes. A light hearted popcorn flick I'd actually want to watch, cool.

“All In”
http://vimeo.com/8845997
Words flying at screen, generic action movie music, and production stills instead of footage? Lame.

“Up/Down”
http://vimeo.com/8830849
Welp, it's a shot of a candle flame, and some voice over. Not even a real candle, some shitty particle effects. Lame looking title, flashing some pictures of famous people maybe? Oh snap! Dude walks out of flames!... Kinda shitty. I only rag on this one because the director dude points out that investment opportunities are available, seems early to be asking for money when that sorry looking thing is the trailer.

“Savageland Pilot”
http://vimeo.com/8805931
Also lame, putting the HBO stinger before your obviously not on HBO video. It's a dude, walking down a poorly lit hallway. With no shoes on, mind you, wouldn't want to get the carpet dirty. And then, blinking. Does cutting to black and then back five times a second actually do anything other than annoy? It makes me close out of the window, that's what.

“It's Not the Same”
http://vimeo.com/8798759
This one is like the opposite of the first one, as in at first I hated this. Well, you got a guy and a gal, talking to each other. And the dude's a writer, and the music's kinda doing nothing. But it grows on me, I think because it is the opposite of the super polished 'indie' flick. There is a taste of a personal story in this, there's a roughness in this. There's a realness (if that's even a word) in this, in that it's not using lavish sets but rather existing in a small piece of the world, telling its own small story. The trailer does linger on a bit long but I'm curious to see if the movie actually goes anywhere, so I guess it did it's job.

"Minus8"
http://vimeo.com/8729151
It's an action movie. So stuff happens that has no substance. To me it seems obvious that the guys who made this are trying as hard as they can to make it look like this is an expensive production, and I can't fault them for that. But it bores me to tears. Generic action music, Lots of close ups of nothing just to emphasize that they have expensive looking props, and the whole thing takes place in a dark void. A bunch of guys that know how to use computers but didn't bother writing something that means something. Or at least I'm assuming so from the trailer. Checked their site and the 'exclusive' clip, and yeah. It's an action movie, I guess. Seems like the sort of thing where the 'making of' extras on the DVD will be twice as long as the actual movie. Very bland.


"Getting Outer Space"
http://vimeo.com/8687012
And one last one, 'cause I'm finally getting sleepy. First few shots and I'm thinking, oh no, bored white kids make another sketch comedy group. But wait, no, this one's actually good, or at least looks it. A coming of age thing, but it's cute, I dig it. I'm using too many commas, I'm going to bed.

Assemblin' an Assembly

So, I've been spending the last few weeks editing. Mostly my own stuff, though every once in a while other work comes in which slows things down a bit. I don't mind though, gives me a chance to take a break from That Thing. Editing is hard. No, hard isn't the right word, though it does become a grind at times, this being one of those times. Wading through so much footage is becoming a daunting, seemingly endless task that's bringing me nothing but frustration. Didn't help that the other day I lost three hours of work because I wasn't diligent enough in saving before Final Cut Pro crashed. Lesson learned the hard way I suppose.

The big thing, I think, is the clash of the present me and the me of a year ago. There's a small amount of pain being inflicted by listening to my directing the cast and crew, the same way some can't stand seeing themselves in photos or video. My voice grates on my nerves. More than that though, I'm constantly questioning choices made, trying to remember why they were done in the first place. Oh, if only I knew then what I know now... It's at least amusing when I find my present self hoping the past self does something like adjust the framing of a shot, or mention a different approach of the scene to an actor, then breathing a sigh of relief when the past self obliges. Laughing out loud at the little moments of genius an actor will interject or accidental moments of beauty that I didn't plan for or notice through the little lcd display become alive in retrospect. That helps.

I don't quite know if editing an entire movie by yourself is normal, I'm assuming it isn't, but it's been interesting seeing how much the self grows over the years. I mean, the person who wrote the script isn't the person who directed the shoot, isn't the person who is now editing what the other two did. Time has caused me to forget most of the thought process behind decisions made years ago, and thus the writer and director no longer exist on this earth. Would the self of a year ago argue with the self of today on the choice of takes, or how long to hold a certain shot? Would he object to an attempt to change the mood of a piece? To add or remove scenes or perhaps change the order? Guess it doesn't really matter, right now I'm hoping that I am removed enough from the shooting process to look at this footage without a bias of how it's supposed to be.

As one can imagine, it's been lonely editing alone. When I'm working on other people's projects, they're usually there. So I have an obligation (within reason) to always be attentive and productive. The hardest part so far has been trying to keep myself motivated. If I'm in a shitty mood then it makes it really hard to sit there for hours trying to work. I'll usually just end up leaving instead of stewing in my own frustration. A problem I've had since elementary school, I'll always put my all and then some when working on group projects, but when it comes to my own homework I couldn't care less. Well, I could, but not enough to actually do the homework, grades be damned. So yeah, progress has been slow. I think the lack of a deadline does that. But hey, got this far, no reason to quit now. Just gotta remember that a bunch of folks helped out with this thing, this isn't homework.